166 A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSISSIPPI uniform. The federal government, controlled by Radical Republicans, quickly moved to institute a more stringent form of Reconstruction to ensureAfricanAmerican civil rights. From March 1867 to March 1870, the federal military controlled Mississippi under the Military Reconstruction Acts. Under provisions of the acts, Major General Edward O. C. Ord, the military officer in charge of the 4th Military District composed of Arkansas and Mississippi, took control of voter registration to ensure African Americans would be able to participate in an election to elect representatives who would write a new Mississippi constitution. By the fall of 1867, a total of 137,561 men had registered to vote, 79,176 African American and 58,385 white. In the election, a triumvirate made up of scalawags, carpetbaggers, andAfricanAmericans formed the Republican Party in Mississippi. Native whites who supported Reconstruction gained the derisive moniker “scalawag,” while Northern whites who came south after the war, many of whom served in the Union army, were referred to as “carpetbaggers.” Thomas Nast popularized the latter term with his 1872 sketch. This group would control Mississippi politics until 1876 and the end of Reconstruction. The election of 1867 resulted in the 1868 biracial “Black and Tan” Convention, which wrote a new state constitution that gave African American men the right to vote and ensured rights, such as trial by jury and access to civil courts, for all Mississippians. A broad spectrum of delegates represented the Piney Woods: one African American, Wesley Lawson of Lawrence County; a former Union soldier and surgeon, Carlos Chapman from Covington County; a member of the Knight band from Jones County, Vinson A. Collins; a pre-war white Whig turned Republican from Pike County, Peres Bonney; Wesley Yeoman, who signed the finished document and served in PHOTO COURTESY OF CAMP SHELBY, SENIOR AIRMAN ALEXANDRA MINOR, 1ST COMBAT CAMERA SQUADRON